Carlos Palacios

Published in: 

⎖ Exhibition Catalogue “Los Irrespetuosos / The disrespectful / die Respektlosen” Carrillo Gil Museum, 1st ed. 2012.

⎖Exhibition Catalogue, “Sobreposición”Carrillo Gil Museum, 1st ed. 2012.

(Arquitectura desdoblada (Sobreposición)) consists of a display mechanism for the exhibition Los Irrespetuosos / The disrespectful / die Respektlosen. Pablo Rasgado’s final design is a superposition –as the title indicates—of at least seven museographic designs conceived and carried out in previous opportunities in the second level of the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil.

Stemming from this idea, which in principle derives from a strategy similar to that of the celebrated artistic projects of Michael Asher (who by using the internal structures of common temporary walls made of sheetrock, accumulated previous museographic projects for specific museums), Rasgado proposes a piece that contains seventeen works from Los Irrespetuosos / The disrespectful / die Respektlosen, certainly distancing himself from the exclusively visual and conceptual presuppositions of Asher in order to operate from an extremely practical functionality at an architectural level. In this sense, Rasgado’s proposal implies two facets of museal nature: the installation, with which the artist participates in the show, and on the other hand, the museographic design. However, in this case, the former is privileged over the latter, for the resulting spaces derived from the addition of museographies do not correspond to any spatial logic, but rather simply to a disposition –considerably random and accumulative—of the walls and the exhibition sites from previous moments in that same exhibition room. This collection generates some areas and small spaces that are very expressive for the projection of videos or for the exhibition of “material“ works to be observed from visual axis that are practically useless according to canonical exhibition design practice. These “axis“, as the artist calls them, suppose a series of accumulative gestures that makes the “space of reunion” visible, that place where old museographic walls emerged and ended up. From there, the artist reconsiders pieces of walls which from one axis to another will be suspended by emptiness, by not finishing them. These remnants of the addition of walls compose bodies of great expressive force, from a sculptural and volumetric condition, which absorbs the resulting space between the axes created by the artist.

(Arquitectura desdoblada (Sobreposición)) supposes the simultaneous accumulation of the history of that level of the museum through the ephemeral constructions that defined and granted visibility to the exhibitions. To reinforce the historiographical tactic of this museographic essay, the installation reutilizes old temporary walls from all the exhibitions that the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil has housed within a period of a year. This sort of décollage grants the entire piece, and to a great extent, the exhibition itself, a “ruined“ condition. Rasgado proposes (from the same strategy of his latest works titled “Arquitecturas desdobladas“) a spatial answer from the existent residues of the museum, making a parody of the idea of the institution as ruin, and scorning the appropriate demands that spatial purity and clarity impose on the “correct“ installation of works of art.

Published in: 

⎖ Press Release, This too shall pass Exhibition.

September 16 – October 28, 2017

Steve Turner is pleased to present This Too Shall Pass, an installation by Pablo Rasgado that incorporates a selection of works by artists from Los Angeles and Latin America: Matthew Brandt, Joshua Callaghan, Jedediah Caesar, Emilio Chapela, Graham Collins, Gustavo Godoy, Tim Hawkinson, Kelly Kleinschrodt, Luciana Lamothe, Leo Marz, Knud Merrild, Matt Nichols, Brian Rochefort and Allen Ruppersberg.

Rasgado’s architectural installation consists of drywall fragments recycled from museum exhibitions that he reconfigures to create exhibition spaces for the works of the other artists. The drywall fragments came from the Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp and the Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City. Rasgado designates these reconstituted forms as “Unfolded Architecture” paintings.

Rasgado’s installation and his selection of artworks address both impermanence and transformation while offering a subtle commentary on building walls. All the works contain material or form that was used in some other way before they became works of art, and the artist thinks of this transformation as a form of alchemy in which the ephemeral becomes ever-lasting while the new artworks still retain some remnant of the cultural content from their previous use. In building walls to juxtapose artists from Los Angeles with those from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, Rasgado elaborates on concepts embedded in LA/LA, the Getty-sponsored Pacific Standard Time project, by choosing Latin American and Los Angeles artists. In addition, the metaphor of the wall is not new to Rasgado’s practice—it has been part of his past solo exhibitions in Los Angeles; however, it now seems more relevant than ever.

Published in: 

⎖ Press Release, Floorplan Exhibition.

April 20 – 23, 2017

At Art Brussels 2017, Steve Turner is pleased to present Floorplan, an installation by Pablo Rasgado (Mexico City) that incorporates a selection of works by a diverse group of ten international artists: Diedrick Brackens (Los Angeles); Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion (Paris); Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Mexico City); Adam Henry (New York); Jonas Lund (Berlin); José Carlos Martinat (Lima); G. T. Pellizzi (Mexico City); Rafaël Rozendaal (New York); Joshua Saunders (Los Angeles) and Michael Staniak (Melbourne).

The booth consists of Rasgado’s architectural installation comprising five connected walls into which he has incorporated fragments of museum exhibition walls from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA). The installation is designed to look like a group of separate art fair booths—each space presents artworks by the different artists amidst the former museum walls. Depending upon a viewer’s vantage point, she will see either the former museum walls, the work of the other artists, or a combination of both.

Rasgado selected artworks that consist of new and used materials often associated with construction and decoration (plywood, steel, plastic, adobe, paint, textile, LED tubes and a broken television monitor) that represent a range of different cultural histories. Despite the variety of materials, the range of countries represented and the diverse narratives, the booth will convey a harmony that unifies rather than divides.

Pablo Rasgado (born 1984 Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico) has had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016); Arratia Beer, Berlin (2012 & 2014); OMR, Mexico City (2013); and Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2011). He has also had work in group exhibitions at XIII Bienal de Cuenca (2016); CAM Raleigh (2014); The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2013); Ex Magazzini di San Cassian, Art Collateral Events, 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2013); Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2012); and Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City (2010). His work is owned by public collections including Wattis Foundation, San Francisco; Perez Art Museum, Miami; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He lives and works in Mexico City.